The Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival will conclude its 12th season April 26–27 with music for six instruments, highlighted by a performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night. Artistic director Ara Gregorian will be joined by violinists Soovin Kim and Axel Strauss, violist Hsin-Yun Huang and cellists Ani Aznavoorian and Michael Kannen. Other works will be Edward Elgar’s String Serenade in E-minor and Johannes Brahms’ String Sextet in B-flat. Gregorian arranged the Elgar work for string sextet.

Also in the spring will be the annual Billy Taylor Jazz Festival, directed by Carroll Dashiell Jr. This year’s festival will take place April 20–21, concluding a week of jazz-related programs. A nationally known guest performer, along with ECU jazz musicians and ensembles, will play, and a special event will be an Alumni ECU Jazz Ensemble-A co-conducted by Music School alumni Cameron “Chip” Crotts, Dorsey Mitchell Butler III, Vaughn Ambrose and Jeremiah Miller. Another feature of Jazz Week will be the Airmen of Note, the U.S. Air Force’s well-known jazz band, which will play April 16 at 7:30 p.m. The ECU Jazz “B” Band will play Wednesday April 18, 7:30 p.m., and the Jazz Bones group will play Thursday, April 19, also at 7:30 p.m., both at Fletcher.

The ECU Opera Theater will present Mozart’s popular Così fan tutte March 29–31 at Fletcher Recital Hall. The production will be conducted by Andrew Crane, director of choral activities. The opera recounts the story of two mismatched couples who find happiness despite their muddled emotions. Some of Mozart’s most beautiful music can be found in this opera.

ECU’s Sixth Annual Organ Competition will take place April 20–22, and the judge for the competition, Joby Bell, will present a recital April 20 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 7:30 p.m. Bell, university organist and assistant music professor at Appalachian State University, will perform works by Bach, Franck, Gawthorp and Jongen.

Among other student ensemble programs in the spring:

The ECU Symphony Orchestra plays April 14 at 7:30 p.m. in Wright Auditorium, with works by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, and a performance by the winner of the ECU Concerto Competition.

The Zamba Yawar Afro-Andean Ensemble will give its annual performance April 10 at 7:30 p.m. at Fletcher Recital Hall.

The ECU Guitar Ensemble will play Monday, April 16, at 7:30 p.m., also at Fletcher.

Above: The JACK Quartet is among several artists at this year's New Music@ECU Festival

he 12th annual New Music@ECU Festival is scheduled March 14–18, with programs by visiting guest artists, the ECU Symphony Orchestra and ECU combined choirs and ECU faculty members. The orchestra and choirs, along with ECU faculty member John Kramar, will perform Henryk Gorecki’s Beatus Vir Saturday, March 17, at Wright Auditorium. Kramar will sing the baritone role. The program also will include the world premiere of marc faris’ Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra, with ECU faculty member Elliot Frank as soloist. Faris is a teaching assistant professor at ECU.

Among the festival’s guest performers will be the Bugallo-Williams Duo (right), pianists, and the JACK Quartet (above), a string quartet. Helena Bugallo and Amy Williams have been performing programs of contemporary music throughout Europe and the Americas since 1995. At the ECU festival March 14, they are to perform Three Dances for Two Prepared Pianos by John Cage, Myzel by Carola Bauckholt, Duelocity by John King and Diptych by Chris Arrell. The JACK Quartet, one of the nation’s leading quartets specializing in new music, will perform March 16. The quartet consists of violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland.

World-renowned pianist Joseph Kalichstein, perhaps best known for his performances and recordings with violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson (right), is scheduled to perform in solo recital Thursday, March 22, at A.J. Fletcher Recital Hall at 7:30 p.m. Kalichstein earned a master’s degree from the Juilliard School, a year after appearing at age 20 in a televised concert with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. He has played with leading orchestras throughout the world.

Seraphic Fire, a Miami-based ensemble, will present a concert of music for choir and organ as part of the Fisk-on-Fourth Concert Series Wednesday, Feb. 29, at 7:30 p.m., at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, in a collaboration between the ECU School of Music and the East Carolina Musical Arts Education Foundation. The group, founded in 2002, consists of singers from around the country and performs a wide variety of music.

Performing Arts

The 50th anniversary season of the S. Rudolph Alexander Performing Arts Series will conclude with a performance by Ballet Memphis March 15 at 8 p.m. at Wright Auditorium and by singer Natalie Cole (left) April 12, also at 8 p.m., at Wright Auditorium. Ballet Memphis is one of the nation’s best known midsize ballet troupes. Cole, daughter of music legend Nat “King” Cole, is a Grammy Award-winning singer of jazz and pop music.

The ECU Storybook Theatre will close out its 2011–12 season March 30 at 7 p.m. with a production of The Secret Garden, adapted from the beloved book by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The story tells of orphaned Mary Lennox as she finds a new life in England with her sickly cousin Colin.

The ECU/Loessin Playhouse will bring its season to an end with the intense drama The Elephant Man Feb. 23–28 and the dark musical The Threepenny Opera April 19–24.

Who’s in town?

J. Kameron Carter, who teaches theology and black church studies at Duke University Divinity School, will give the Jarvis Lecture on Christianity and Culture March 13 at 7 p.m. at Wright Auditorium as part of the Voyages of Discovery Lecture Series sponsored by the Thomas Harriot College of Arts and Sciences. Carter is author of Race: A Theological Account, published in 2008, and is completing The Secular Jesus: Religion and the Project of Civilization for Yale University Press. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Temple University, a master of theology degree from Dallas Theological Seminary and a doctorate from the University of Virginia.

Cinema

The second season of the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers ends in March and April. The March 13 movie will be A Good Man, about African-American choreographer Bill T. Jones putting on a dance-theater piece in honor of Abraham Lincoln, and the April 17 movie will be My Perestroika, a film by Robin Hessman about the last generation to grow up in the former Soviet Union. The films are presented at 7 p.m. at the Greenville Museum of Art and the directors of the films will be present to answer questions about their work.

On exhibit

The School of Art and Design’s annual exhibition of undergraduate work takes place March 1–31 at the Wellington Gray Gallery, and the exhibition of works by master of fine arts thesis students is scheduled April 13–May 18 at the gallery. The undergraduate students’ awards will be presented March 1.